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The Thirty Years War

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The Thirty Years War

By: C. V. Wedgwood
Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
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About this listen

Initially, the Thirty Years War was precipitated in 1618 by religious conflicts between Protestants and Catholics in the Holy Roman Empire. But the conflict soon spread beyond religion to encompass the internal politics and balance of power within the Empire, and then later to the other European powers. By the end, it became simply a dynastic struggle between Bourbon France and Habsburg Spain. And almost all of it was fought out in Germany. After 30 years of conflict, entire regions of Germany and Bohemia were depopulated and destroyed by marching armies, fire, famine, and disease. It bankrupted most of the participants while leaving thousands of German villages, towns, and even cities in smoldering ruin.

Because of the political and geographical complexity of the early 17th century, an understanding of The Thirty Years War can be difficult to grasp in the beginning. Listeners will be rewarded by patience. As an aid to comprehension, we recommend the online Wikipedia article "The Thirty Years War" for maps and overviews of the geography, principle leaders, and major battles.

Total running time: 19 hours and 48 minutes. Narrator: Charlton Griffin.

©1938 Estate of C. V. Wedgwood (P)2012 Audio Connoisseur Europe War France King Royalty Imperialism

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All stars
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I've listened to this book three time now. It's an extremely well written history of the period and the narrator actually does it credit, as dramatic as his narration appears. it suits the dramatic events or covers. highly recommended it

great book, pleasing narration

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The narrative is quite heavy and occasionally difficult to follow, but it’s a very thorough coverage of the war.

Heavy but informative

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A well written, if dry and detailed, book which I suspect had a bit more of a dry humour than the narrator managed to get across. Whilst the narrator has a pleasant tone, some of his pronunciations are a little strange. You may think this is not much of an issue but constant repetition of mispronunciations - bizarrely mixed with the same word being correctly pronounced sometimes almost in the same sentence - had me shouting at my iPad (see title).

It’s Prague not Prog FFS!!!

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I thoroughly enjoyed this one!
It is a bit of a bombardment of information, but I knew next to nothing of this time period and now feel I have a much better grasp of it, but more importantly, I find I'm now much more interested in it!

If you enjoy history and have an interest in war and all of its effects on country and population, I 100% recommend this book!

Outstanding

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This is a wonderful book which covers in elegant and pithy prose the complex history of a terrible war.
Unfortunately, it was spoiled by woefully inept narration. The style was that of a Victorian Actor determined to give a Dramatic Reading ( in capital letters) no matter what the content. This started out as laughable but became increasingly irritating. This was a history book, for Goodness Sake, not a Shakespeare soliloquy.
Possibly even more irritating was the mannered and inconsistent pronunciation of proper nouns. We had “ Prog” for Prague but not “ Veen” for Vienna. Alsace started out as “Alsayce” became “Alsass” after a while and latterly meandered between the two. We had “ Maximeellian” throughout for Maximilian but we also had “George” and “ William” when the holders of these names would have been called “Georg” and “Veelhelm”. There were countless other examples. It all came across as ignorant and inept.
I blame the reader, who is presumably a professional actor and should get this sort of thing right. But I blame more the producer or director whose job should be to pick up this sort of thing and keep the actor on the straight and narrow.
They should have adopted standard American pronunciation and stuck to it.
The overall result was like listening to someone reading out in a book in a language they didn’t understand.

A wonderful book mangled by inept reading

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The terrible saga of the 30 years war is recounted here like an epic poem. So many places, people, twists & turns. To get the most out of this history you probably need to know all about the war in the first place. For many listeners, myself included, the wonderful stentorian phrasing and pronunciation of Charlton Griffith is like a tragic symphony, washing over you, leaving an overall impression but no specific facts. Indeed I think I would have learnt more specific facts about the 30 years war by studying wikipedia for half an hour. Yet this is a great work of history. Its not so much that it is too detailed, its just that the events themselves are so numerous and complicated. Highly recommended but not for everyone.

More poetry than history

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Without a doubt the only book you need on the 30 Years war. The narration is superb , easy to listen to, Got this book as an introduction to the War of the Spanish Succession. As reccommended by another listener, and it was the right thing to do. The 30YW is a great audio book from Start to finish and Charlton Griffen delivers in every single chapter, his pronouncing of names of people and places is faultless, and makes what could of been a tedious book into a piece of history that is easy to understand. The author C V Wedgwood has a brilliant book that is easy to understand, and well researched. I thoroughly recommend this author, narrator and book.

A narration masterclass

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CV Wedgwood’s Thirty Years War is old school history: clear, dispassionate, balanced, letting the facts speak for themselves, delivered with a dry wit and thumbnail sketches that help to nail the characters for the listener (“he was clever enough to be unhappy, but not clever enough to be successful”, etc.)

The reader is well suited to the text. Some of the European place name pronunciations are different to those I’m used to in the U.K., but that’s the only minor issue I had.

Thoroughly recommended.

Good Old-fashioned Narrative History

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This is a serious account of a tragic war, lots of detail, but would benefit from less intense reading style.

Good account, slightly overdramaticly read

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A great history of a very confusing topic and the constant chopping and changing of sides etc. Made sense to me finally. Would have liked more on the military aspects ie tactics, battle plans etc. Instead what we get is that someone won and that's it.

Light out of Darkness

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